Wiedmer: A-Rod may always remain A-fraud in the record books

Yippeeee! Alex Rodriguez finally reached 600 home runs on Wednesday. A congratulatory ad from Bad Guy Pharmaceuticals should appear in newspapers across the country any day now.

Never mind that it took A-Fraud 12 games to advance from No. 599 to No. 600, the longest homerless stretch between those two numbers of any of the previous six men to beat him there — Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, Ken Griffey Jr., Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa.

Perhaps that's what de-juicing will do for you. It's amazing how much longer it can take to amass 600 homers when they're earned through diligence rather than drugs.

Yet even with that momentary drought, Rodriguez is still the youngest player — 35 years, eight days — to reach this milestone, getting there 18 months ahead of Ruth, the previous babe of the bunch.

Still, Ruth never admitted to taking performance enhancing drugs to accelerate his pace to the top of baseball's record books. Heck, the Babe was the poster boy for overcoming bad living — rich food, alcohol and the companionship of more than one woman — to become the most famous player ever.

And that's the chief reason most folks aren't much more worked up about A-Fraud’s big achievement this morning than they are about Wednesday rolling into Thursday.

It's a record, but not necessarily one to celebrate. After all, how will we ever know which homers were earned from lifting weights as opposed to lifting a pill bottle. Was it that sweet swing or a syringe?

This isn't to say Rodriguez can't play. Other than a hole-in-one, there may be few more difficult tasks in sports than using a rounded stick of wood to hit a round ball traveling more than 80 miles an hour in such a way as to make the ball fly more than 350 feet.

With or without artificial help, that's an exercise only the most athletically gifted among us can routinely pull off at any level, much less the major league one. Even if only half of A-Rod's homers weren't tainted, 300 dingers by the age of 35 is a pretty fair career.

But Rodriguez has never been about pretty fair. He's been about becoming the richest player in major league history with a $250 million contract. Then about playing for the sport's most storied team, the New York Yankees. Then about riding into history as the greatest home run hitter ever if can eclipse the 762 home runs swatted by the most infamous drug store Pow!-boy of them all — Barry Bonds.

And he might yet get there, passing the four legitimate legends currently in front of him — Aaron (755), Ruth (714), Mays (660) and Griffey Jr. (630) — as well at the two frauds Bonds and Sosa.

But this is also but the 17th homer of the season for Rodriguez. He's begun to battle injuries. He'll have to hit every remaining home run of his career without a PED dispenser.

So can he do it? Let’s say he plays five more years after this one and he hits 10 more homers this season. That would leave A-Rod needing to average a fraction more than 30 homers a season to break the record when he’s 40.

Given that he's hit at least 30 home runs in 13 different seasons and 41 or more eight times it would be foolish to bet against him. But wanting him to break it is quite another matter.

Then again, unless the lords of baseball change the record books, adding asterisks — or tiny syringe symbols — where needed, A-Fraud passing Bad News Barry would only be one cheater eclipsing another.

And maybe that's why they say records are made to be broken. Only reputations should last forever, be they the spotless one forged by Aaron or the spurious ones earned by Bonds and Rodriguez.